10-11-19 Groklaw Censorship Evidence

Groklaw - Digging For Truth? No: Groklie - Deleting The Truth. 20-page document showing examples of GroklXX's insidious censorship with screenshots and explanation. Also quotes from similar complaints published by others in 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2010.

Groklaw - Digging For Truth? No: Groklie - Deleting The Truth. 20-page document showing examples of GroklXX's insidious censorship with screenshots and explanation. Also quotes from similar complaints published by others in 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2010.

At different points in time including yesterday, certain readers of my blogwho also readGroklXX(that site calls itself "Groklaw" but I have my reasons to refer to it as "Groklie" in certain contexts)have provided me with information and material (screenshots and locally saved HTML files)documenting GroklXX's censorship of perfectly appropriate, non-offensive user comments.User comments were apparently deleted only because they reflect the growing disagreement between GroklXX's mystery-shrouded editors hiding behind an avatar named PJ and some of thesite's open-minded, facts-focused readers. This includes requests for explanations of such deletions.For some time, I kept collecting evidence while hoping that there would never be a need to show itto a larger audience. I never promised the submitters that I would use the material they volunteered.However, yesterday marked a new low. GroklXX censored an entire subthread containing areference to -- and reasonable discussion of -- a comment I posted on ZDNet. The deleted partincluded comments from some of GroklXX's most loyal users and volunteer contributors.In my observation, GroklXX's censorship far exceeds that of corporate websites, which either don'tallow comments at all or accept criticism -- even of the harsher kind -- within reason.Disinformation and fabrication of consensus are irreconcilable with the core values of the free andopen source software community -- the audience GroklXX seeks to mislead with such and similar behavior.Those complaints are not new, and this documentation quotes and links to several reports from userswho eyewitnessed, and were in some cases affected, by GroklXX's truth-suppressing ways.There is overwhelming evidence -- old, recent, and brand-new -- that GroklXX is anything but atrue and open community discussion forum and that the opinions expressed by and on that site aredefinitely not representative of the beliefs held by the open source community at large.

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Table of contents

1Incidents on 18 November 2010......................................................................................3

1.1Deletion of discussion of ZDNet comment.......................................................................31.2Deletion of question about censorship...............................................................................7

2Incident on 11 April 2010..............................................................................................11

2.1Perfectly appropriate and respectful user comment related to IBM/TurboHercules.......112.2Baseless allegation of "personal attacks"........................................................................122.3Unjustified removal of the entire subthread: visible only to the original commenter.....13

3Previously published complaints over GroklXX's censorship...................................16

section for "[d]iscussions about thingsunrelated to the main article."At 09:34 AM GMT, a user saved a local copy of the

Off Topic

section of the discussion under theGroklaw article,

"Oracle declines to press its motion to dismiss, so motion is dismissed

.

"

This URLleads to the current state of that section.The following screenshot shows the relevant part of the aforementioned local copy:[Screenshot #1:] None of those comments was objectionable. This is the comment that opened the thread:[Screenshot #2:]The link in the above comment that opened the thread pointed tothis comment on ZDNet.The first response,